Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are back here again trying to address this issue, which is a pity. If the Government had listened not just to what we were saying but what the market was saying, it would not be bringing in this legislation, at this stage, to cap rent increases at 2%. If the Minister had listened to what we said, he would be aware of what the increases in the past were doing and that no increases should be allowed while we are in a housing emergency that is continuing. In fact, it is getting worse, so much so that houses that were built by the then Dublin Corporation are now selling for €350,000. Those homes were built by the corporation in the 1970s and 1980s as part of its housing stock. Whether it was right or wrong to sell them to tenants is a different debate. The fact is they were sold to working-class people, in the main, in places like Crumlin, Drimnagh and Ballyfermot. They were sold to people who were working at the time, and are still working, in professions and who could not afford to buy them today. People cannot afford the prices that are being sought for houses.

The reason I am bringing up the prices of houses for sale is that they are driving young working families to look to rent in areas in which they never sought to rent before because homes were affordable to buy. They are competing with professional families who can outbid them, although only just. Even professionals, if that is even a word we use any more, with two incomes, cannot afford the colossal rents that are being sought in this city. It has the third most expensive rents in the EU, as a colleague noted earlier. To afford the average rent in this city, a couple would need an income of €6,000 a month. It is just not affordable. While it is welcome that the Government is stepping in to do something, it does not go far enough. There should be no increase in rents. A national housing emergency should be declared and we should act accordingly. That has not been done and it does not look like it will be done. That means the couples I am talking about will continue to suffer and we will end up with emigration on the back of a housing crisis. There is no need for that to happen.

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